On Self Abandonment as Survival
Many clients come to therapy wanting to change patterns they describe as people-pleasing, poor boundaries, or chronic self-abandonment. These behaviors feel frustrating and confusing, especially when they continue long into adulthood.
But these tendencies rarely appear out of nowhere. Yet it’s a tricky thing to approach for a number of reasons, most notably, because these behaviors can be rooted in so many different things that are rarely obvious.
Often times, our persistent drive to accommodate and acclimate to the needs of others requires an abandonment of our own wants, needs, and desires.
I speak from experience when I say this next part: in extreme cases, our wants and desires are not merely hidden away for safekeeping. Instead, they become forgotten entirely as part of an adaptive survival strategy.
When Survival Means Forgetting Yourself
We can lose touch with what inspired us in our earliest years. We forget what it felt like to move freely toward what we are most curious about, towards joy, creativity, or desire. Sometimes, we even forget what it feels like to want anything at all.
I cannot tell you how many times in my life I’ve started to feel something— I mean anything from happiness to sadness to anger— only to immediately feel the sharp sting of scrutiny.
As the gulf between myself and my present experience widened, the sense of despair and frustration became all-consuming. It always culminated in the same thing, posed both as a genuine question and ferocious indictment:
What the hell is wrong with me?
The Truth About Trauma Responses and Dysfunctional Family Systems
The truth is: there was never anything inherently wrong with me.
Not in the way the question implied and certainly not if you saw me in the context of my family system.
Why Trauma Survivors Blame Themselves
Instead, I was chastising myself for adaptations I developed in order to survive in an unsafe and unstable environment.
It feels natural to attack ourselves for behaviors like people-pleasing, emotional suppression, hypervigilance, and self-neglect because that’s what many of us had to learn to do.
But the absurdity of toxic shame—of turning on ourselves and fully believing we are worthless—is laid bare when we think about this another way.
A Language Analogy for Emotional Survival
Imagine you are born in the United States and grow up hearing and speaking only English. This is how you orient yourself and navigate the world! It’s on signs telling you what’s what, it’s how you ask for food or, how you get what you need, and how you connect with others.
Knowing this language is your lifeline.
Now imagine you are plopped down in a remote area of another country, let’s say Germany.
You’ll undoubtedly recognize the letters, though they are not always as you know them, and some words may seem similar enough to intuit with context. You overhear others speaking to one another in sounds that don’t feel at all familiar. It’s clear they understand each other, but you grasp nothing.
The moment someone starts speaking to you—especially if under the assumption that you are fluent in German—you will have no idea what to grab onto. You won’t know how to respond or what to think. Your interlocutor may sense your confusion and give up, but would you ask yourself:
What the hell is wrong with me?
Probably not.
You don’t speak German. You were never taught the language. You were never given the opportunity to learn it through repeated exposure, safety, and practice.
Now imagine something even more painful.
What happens when you’re not allowed to make mistakes
Take it a step further and imagine your family insisted—both explicitly and implicitly—that English is the only language in the world. This is how everyone speaks and there are a number of words and phrases you’re expected to already know.
There’s little room for mistakes.
Every time you say the wrong thing or respond in ways that don’t line up with your family’s expectations you are chastised, belittled, and humiliated.
“How do you not know this already?”
“After everything we’ve done for you?”
“Your cousin doesn’t struggle like this.”
“What is the matter with you?”
Over time, shame becomes the teacher.
Shame, Self-Compassion, and Childhood Trauma
In our earliest years, survival depends on staying in the good graces of our caregivers. Without them, we die.
How Shame Shapes the Inner Critic
Shame therefore becomes a powerful signal and essential tool that tells us when we’ve done something “unacceptable.” It keeps us from doing the same unacceptable thing again and helps to ensure we avoid abandonment, punishment, or rejection.
For many people living with complex trauma or Complex PTSD (CPTSD), chronic self-criticism is one of the most common symptoms of complex trauma. Self-criticism becomes less of a personality trait and more of a deeply ingrained survival strategy.
How self-criticism Develops as a Survival Strategy
When we’re very young it’s in our best interest to assume we’re at fault rather than question the adults responsible for us. We only begin to see through our caregivers infallibility if they take the time to introduce us to their own humanity and messiness.
So, of course, we assume responsibility and internalize the belief that that our discomfort, confusion, sensitivity, or emotional needs are evidence of personal failure. We start to build our inner critic.
Nuance becomes difficult. While moving away from all-or-nothing thinking is conceptually quite nice, it’s not readily available to our bodies. It doesn’t feel true.
Compassion toward ourselves can feel inaccessible, even dangerous.
Sometimes we can easily extend understanding to others while feeling completely incapable of offering the same grace to ourselves. The rules of compassion don’t apply to us, or it’s simply our lot to feel this way.
So why is self-compassion so important, and why can it feel so uncomfortable to develop?
Why Self-Compassion Feels So Uncomfortable
For adult children of dysfunctional family systems, the idea of self-compassion can trigger intense defenses and internal resistance.
Many of us fear that if we stop criticizing themselves, if we aren’t on our own asses 24/7, then everything will fall apart. We worry we’ll become lazy, irresponsible, selfish, or out of control…we’ll give in to our vices, we’ll laze about while our lives and relationships crumble.
This fear makes sense.
Why Self-Compassion Can Feel Unsafe After Complex Trauma
For many folks healing from CPTSD, self-compassion feels especially unavailable because self-criticism became the primary engine behind achievement and survival.
We’ve bullied ourselves into things we might actually be proud of.
My musical abilities, getting through college, and developing my career were all shaped—at least in part—through self-aimed derision and abuse.
I accomplished things, but the pain was immense.
Far more suffering took place than was necessary to get through it all. When we are cruel to ourselves, we end up playing both roles simultaneously: the abuser and the abused. Both roles create guilt and shame, emotions we’re already highly sensitive to.
What Self-Compassion Actually Means
Being kind to yourself does'n’t mean blowing smoke up your own ass or telling yourself everything is fine—when it isn’t.
Self-Compassion Is Not Self-Indulgence
In many ways, self-compassion is the opposite of harsh self-judgment, of assuming fault and belittling yourself. Let’s try to find some more room for nuance.
What if you treated yourself like a full human being instead of a problem to solve?
What if you treated yourself like a complex person?
What if you considered the language analogy I gave above and recognized both the brilliance and the limitations of the survival strategies that once protected you?
Because it can be so difficult to see ourselves as worthy of kindness, it may help to start small.
How to Practice Self-Compassion After Trauma
Small Ways to Reconnect With Yourself:
Try noticing negative self-talk without immediately believing it. Allow room for complexity.
Do your best to let the feelings exist without judgment.
Tend to your discomfort like you would a hurting child.
Acknowledge the pain.
Acknowledge that you’re doing your best with the tools you currently have.
Acknowledge the possibility that you may want to try something new when the inner critic inevitably chimes in.
These acts may sound simple, but for many people healing self-abandonment, they represent an entirely new emotional experience.
Acknowledging and validating that you are in pain and being met with gentleness, are forms of care and kindness you were rarely afforded in childhood.
It often helps to imagine I’m speaking directly to myself as a child. Perhaps this practice could be helpful for you too. Kindness and emotional safety are things you have always deserved.
You can also read more about shame & starting to heal the inner critic in Liam’s earlier blog. →
Healing From Self-Abandonment and Complex Trauma
Healing From Complex PTSD Takes Time
Working through the effects of childhood relational trauma and dysfunctional family systems is deeply rewarding, and unfortunately, deeply painful.
In my view, being kind to yourself is less the ‘cure’ and more so it lays the foundation for growth and healing to be possible. Self compassion becomes the resource you return to when things get difficult.
There is far more to say about self-abandonment, people-pleasing, shame and self-compassion than I can cover here, but these resources may be a helpful place to begin. I’ve found them incredibly helpful to me.
Recommended Books on Self-Compassion and Complex Trauma
Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving by Pete Walker
Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself by Kristen Neff
Featured therapist author:
Liam DeGeorgio, AMFT, is a neurodivergent associate marriage & family therapist who strives to challenge society’s expectations and perceptions of ‘normal’. He lives with ADHD, OCD, and PTSD and enjoys working with clients wanting to challenge toxic masculinity, embrace feminism & anti-racism, and adults with childhood trauma. He loves playing the drums, reading books, and his four cats.
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